The Apostles’ Creed: SalvationSample

Consequences of Sin: Romans 5:12,19

Scripture indicates that after Adam and Eve sinned, God judged and cursed the entire human race. This curse affected every aspect of their being. It immediately resulted in the spiritual death that is spoken of throughout Scripture, as in John 5:24-25, Ephesians 2:1-5, and Colossians 2:13-14. It also produced corruption in our beings, both body and soul, as we see in Jeremiah 17:9 and Romans 7:18–8:11. And it ultimately led to physical death, as we read in Genesis 3:19 and Romans 5:12. Finally, sin earned humanity eternal suffering under God’s judgment in hell, as we learn from passages like Matthew 5:29-30.

The well-known pastor Charles Spurgeon, who lived from 1834 to 1892, spoke of God’s curse on Adam and Eve in his sermon The Curse Removed. Consider the what he said:

What does that curse include? It involves death, the death of this body ... It includes spiritual death, a death of that inner life which Adam had — the life of the spirit, which hath now fled, and can only be restored by [the] Holy Spirit ... And it includes, last of all, and worst of all, that death eternal ... all that can be gathered in that terrible, that awful ... word "hell." 

What’s worse, the consequences of Adam and Eve’s sin also spread to the entire human race — to everyone who descended from them through natural generation. We see the universal extent of sin in passages like 1 Kings 8:46, Romans 3:9-12, Galatians 3:22, and Ephesians 2:3. Consider the way Paul talked about Adam’s sin in Romans 5:12-19:

Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned... [Through] the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners (Romans 5:12, 19).

Adam was the covenant head of the entire human race. And Paul taught that because of this, Adam’s sin was credited to all his descendants. And as a result, we are sinners by nature. We come into the world spiritually dead, subject to pain and hardship, and destined for physical death. 

It’s hard to exaggerate; it’s impossible for us even to understand the full consequence of sin. But our sin is a revolt against the Creator. It is an effort to rob him of his glory, it is breaking his law, it is falling short of his glory. It is in every way setting ourselves as God’s enemies. Sin disrupts our relationship with God because God is holy. He cannot look upon sin. As a consequence of his holiness, he must pour out his wrath upon sin. So, when you look at human sinfulness, it is everything we need to know about our problem. It’s also everything we need to know about ourselves. Sin is the short, three-letter psychology that helps us to understand what we see in the mirror, and what we know ourselves to be. It also reminds us that there is no way we can rescue ourselves from this predicament. Only God can do that, and he does so in Christ. – Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

The problem of sin is truly dire. All humanity is utterly lost and condemned. We have no way to redeem ourselves. We are perpetually doomed to suffer under God’s judgment. 

There is no way for us to earn back his favor, or to make amends for our sin. Apart from God’s gracious forgiveness, there is absolutely no hope of salvation.